May 19, 2012

Your Clients Do Not See Blogs as Sales Letters

With all this crazy BLOG week that we are having, I came across a great new video by internet marketing legend Frank Kern.

Now I don’t get anything for referring you to Frank, i just thought this video would explain how powerful having a BLOG can be for your business.

Frank is a bit crazy and the intro to the video is quite long but quite amusing, but once you get on to the educational bit you’ll see why I sent you there.

Watch Frank’s Crazy video right now

Once you’ve watched the video and are ready to get started with you BLOG, follow the link to Easy Fitness BLOGs to get your BLOG today

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The Traffic Question…

BLOG trafficOne question that we have been hearing a lot (both in emails and on the various forums) is this:

“What about traffic to my blog?”

In other words, how do you get people to your blog?

This is a great question, and I am really pleased that so many of you are asking it – it shows that we have some really sharp readers.  :-)

You see, not to long ago, we were in the “build it and they will come” era.

“Webmasters” were cold-calling businesses, and showing them some fancy looking site and giving them some pie-in-the-sky sales pitch about how they would build some fancy site for them (really just one of those brochure sites), and then they would tell them how many million users there were on the Internet… and if only 1% of those people visited the site, it would mean wealth beyond dreams.

OK, maybe I am exaggerating a bit… but not very much!

With all these questions I have been getting about traffic, it is obvious that we have all gotten a little more sophisticated – or at lease we have been through the wringer a few too many times.

In any case, this is the deal with traffic (but hey I am by no means the ultimate guru on traffic but I have been studying this stuff non-stop for a couple of years now):

KEY POINT #1: Traffic is important, but conversion is just as important… and maybe more so.

You see, if your blog doesn’t convert visitors into leads, and then leads who know, like and trust you, it doesn’t matter if you are getting 10,000  visitors to your site every day. It really is that simple.

The better your site converts, the more money you make. And the way our blogs are built, when your blog delivers a lead… that lead is already pre-sold to a large degree. So you are not only getting more business, you aren’t working as hard once you get that business.

Another key thing about conversion – the better your conversion, the more liberties you can take in spending money to get visitors to your site.

You see, a lot of traffic sources are free. However, you can also pay to drive traffic. Well, if your site is converting 5 visitors out of 100 versus your competitors site converting 1 visitor out of 1000, then you can spend more money to drive people to your site.

KEY POINT #2: The best traffic is local.

The traffic that you want at your blog is traffic from people that are local to you (in a geographic sense). This is the traffic that is going to turn into personal training clients or bootcamp sign ups.

It probably won’t help you much if someone who lives in Russia visits your site, and you are in  Nottingham.  :-)

The good news about this is that it is easier to “win” free traffic from the search engines if that traffic is local.

This is a nice paradox – the local traffic is not only easier to get, but it is a lot more valuable.

But most of the “big boy” generic cookie-cutter site providers completely miss this point.

Our blog system and training is designed to help you capture that local traffic. Obviously, I can’t give away too much on this… because I guarantee that my competitors are
watching me. But this is a key area of traffic that we are going to dominate.

Which leads to another big point…

KEY POINT #3: This isn’t just a blog!

Because of the software we use, WordPress, we have access to one of the most powerful content management systems on the internet today

This is critical for expanding your site to more than just another generic blog – there is little point in providing something to you that you can get from somewhere else for free.

Your blog can morph in to many different things:

  • A video blogging system, for example a whole library of exercise videos that you produce.
  • A podcast portal, with you interviewing experts in your niche for your visitors to listen to.
  • The ability to add static pages that promote your services and sell your products
  • The basis for affiliate marketing other peoples products and services.

And with some further development from our base build you can create “members only” areas to truly monetise your blog!

How can you do all this stuff, well we are going  start by teaching you the basics and then give you the step by step guides to doing more as your blog expands.

Ultimately all these extra features convert your traffic in to regular visitors, sign ups and then to paying clients.

BOTTOM LINE: Traffic is critically important. You need a system that CONVERTS that traffic to dollars, you need a system that captures LOCAL traffic, and you need the ability to add the CONTENT that boosts the “know, like and trust” then have in you to become a client.

Regards

Tim

P.S. We have two very cool traffic techniques that are working right now to get search engines to list new blogs VERY quickly. We will cover that in one of our first follow-up sessions after we launch the system.

P.P.S. I know people are wondering about what this will cost. There has been a lot of speculation in the emails I am getting. Let me say that it will NOT be $999, and it will NOT be even $499.(these are some of the numbers that have been getting thrown around in comments I am getting). Don’t worry – it will be FAR less than that. I will be addressing this question soon…

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Fitness Professionals Blogging For Profit

blogging-for-profitIf you’ve been around the internet and internet marketing for long enough you’ll have seen adverts and emails telling you how you can make money with your BLOG. You sometimes here it being called “monetising your blog”.

The basic concept is around creating a BLOG, with some content getting enough traffic and then selling advertising on your site. Great idea in theory, but in practice it doesn’t work. I’ve tried it, it wasted more time, effort and money than it made. In fact I made nothing, cos I didn’t get anyone to advertise on it :o (

The other option is to create a BLOG and then put google adsense on your page. The idea is that you get enough traffic on to your blog who will read your content and then click on the google adwords adverts that appear and you get a cut of the money the advertiser has paid for the click. Once again great in theory, but in practice it doesn’t really work. I’ve tried this too and made a whopping 0.23 USD from it.

Now for some people this does work, if you have enough visitors, you can start making some money, but to be honest it is much to much like hard work.

It seems as if these marketing gurus have been misleading us, those sneaky guys!

However, I know of a way that is actually more likely to make you money from your BLOG that is much more accessible and doesn’t require a critical mass of traffic or any selling of advertising space.

When you create a BLOG you are building relationships with your readers, that IS the primary purpose of having a BLOG. It is a means of engaging new people in to your ethos of fitness and showing them you know your stuff by writing posts that are both informative and conversational (hopefully a bit like this BLOG). Also adding videos that you have created and possibly finding others that are entertaining and informative, related to your BLOGs subject.

Over time your readers will grow to know, like and trust you, but ultimately the reason you are writing the BLOG is to bring those readers in to your group of paying clients/customers.

You’re not writing this BLOG for fun are you! Are YOU?

blog-for-fun

So what do you sell them?

OK, obviously you are going to sell them your stuff. Personal Training, your bootcamp, weight loss classes, e-book if you have one. But really the amount of stuff you have to sell them is kinda limited.

Selling other peoples stuff is where you can also look to monetise your BLOG. This is easy, many products out there have what’s called an affiliate program, where you can register as an affiliate and sell their e-book, course, software on their behalf.

Think Turbulence Training, or Dax Moy’s Magic Hundred, they can be sold by you as an affiliate. Often you’ll make 50% commission on every sale, sometimes much more! This can have a very positive influence on your bank balance, and truely make good money from blogging.

There is one caveat to this, ONLY sell stuff that you believe in yourself, that means you have to buy it yourself, use it and actually like it.

You don’t want to annoy your trusting readers with products and services that suck do you… You’ll see from time to time I will recommend a product, or the adverts on the right hand side of this page are all of stuff I have used and continue to use. They are products that I really think you would benefit from, the same should go for what you recommend too.

So certainly making money from your fitness blog is possible, but remember to be selective with what products you promote and always continue to provide entertaining and informative content.

COMING SOON

Now if you don’t have a BLOG yet, or you are still using WordPress.com or Blogger.com to host your BLOG, then in just a weeks time, on June 8th, I will be releasing a brand new MyFitGeek service to help you get your blogging really working for you. So make sure you keep a check on your emails over the coming week for more information about this exciting new project.

You’ll want to stay alert too because you really cannot miss out on what I have coming.

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Creating Content For Your BLOG

The danger of creating BLOGs is that the owner quickly forgets to update with new content. The site becomes dormant and you valued readers turn their back on you and your BLOG.

I’ve got too many BLOGs! At last count I have about 8 and I just created a new one just last week. Keeping up with updating all these sites is a right royal pain in the butt. It is not easy to have new content coming through on a regular basis and is always difficult to maintain a freshness with your content too.

Ultimately all that effort and time to get a great looking BLOG up and running has been wasted and you basically have to start from scratch again.

I’ve had BLOGs that have remained dormant, one that went great for well over 18 months but, then started to look a little dated so I kinda forgot about it… A shame really as it really wasn’t all that bad and the content on there was pulling great search rankings. But I got busy doing other stuff, I got busy with my clients, the bootcamp I run, and the other projects I have my head in and it very quickly gets forgotten.

The solution to this is to have a system.

A system of writing new content each week without fail. I have three afternoons where I don’t have clients, this is when I write.

I force myself to write, I just start writing on a pad and do that for 30 minutes without stopping, sometimes it flows and i produce some stunning content. Other times it is like pulling teeth, and the result is not so great, but I get at least something down every few days each week.

Other fitness marketers have similar rituals, I know for a fact that Craig Ballantyne gets up every morning and writes for an hour. This is his habit to make sure he is producing content all the time.

So set in your schedule a time to write, and write free flow for at least 30 minutes. Don’t get me wrong it is hard work to get started sometimes but once you are in the habit you’ll produce stuff regular as clock work.

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Blogger Vs WordPress For Personal Trainers

Blogger vs WordPress for your personal trainer blog.

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